Some of the first modern settlers of Britain from 10,000 years ago had dark skin and curly hair, according to new analysis of a historic skeleton. By Zahid Mahmood, CNN

A facial reconstruction made from the skull of a 10,000 year old man, known as 'Cheddar Man.'

The "Cheddar Man" fossil was discovered in 1903 in a cave in the village of Cheddar in Somerset, south-west England. He is the oldest complete skeleton to have been discovered in Britain, and would have been part of the last wave of immigrants to populate Briton after the ice age. Today's white Britons can trace their roots back to descendants of these people, and it was initially believed that "Cheddar man" had fair hair and skin.Now, after cutting-edge DNA analysis and facial reconstruction by a team of scientists from the Natural History Museum and University College London, it is believed he had blue eyes, "dark brown to black skin" and "dark curly hair." The pioneering research, published in advance of a TV documentary, shows that the pale skin that is characteristic of modern Europeans is a more recent phenomenon than previously thought. It also suggests that a person's geographical origin was not always associated with the color of their skin. "The Cheddar Man's genetic profile places him in a wider population than England," Yoan Diekmann, a lead researcher in the project told CNN. "He belonged to western hunter gatherers from Spain, Luxembourg, Germany there are even traces to the Middle East and today 10% of our ancestry can be linked to this population."